1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a semiconductor apparatus.
2. Related Art
It is known in the conventional art that semiconductor apparatuses used, for example, to ignite internal combustion engines are formed by power semiconductor devices, which are configured to handle high power. It is known that the circuitry configured to drive such a power semiconductor device may include a protection circuit designed to detect an abnormal state of the power semiconductor device that may be caused by, for example, heating and to prevent the abnormal power semiconductor device from affecting the internal combustion engine (see, for example, Patent Documents 1 to 3).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-6464
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-247072
Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-74937
Such a protection circuit includes a detector circuit configured to detect whether the power source voltage has an overvoltage level and/or a temperature detector element configured to detect the temperature of the power semiconductor device in order to detect the abnormal state of the power semiconductor device. In order to detect whether the power source voltage has the overvoltage level, however, an extra terminal is required to input the power source voltage, which may require an increased area for the chip of the power semiconductor device. In addition, when the temperature detector element is provided, errors may be included in the detected results due to the manufacturing-process-induced variability in detected temperature of the temperature detector element.